Bridge Between Faith, Science Sought in Stars

It was starting to seem that the goal of the church outing was to ascend to the heavens.

Mile after winding mile, a line of vans slowly advanced up the side of the rugged mountain. When the bumpy, rudimentary road dead-ended at a closed gate, a priest jumped out of the lead vehicle, unlocked it and waved the caravan through.

There, more than 10,000 feet above the vast Arizona desert, appeared an unlikely sight: one of the most advanced telescopes on Earth, a piece of equipment containing a mirror so fragile that some had joked it would require divine intervention to safely haul the mirror to the peak of Mt. Graham, about 150 miles northeast of Tucson.

Even more unlikely was the small plaque indicating the telescope’s primary owner -- the Vatican, an institution known for its focus on religion, not cutting-edge science.

Though few Americans know it, the Vatican has for more than 100 years funded and staffed world-class observatories, first in Italy and, since the early 1980s, in Arizona, where the height of Mt. Graham and the dark desert nights are ideal for telescope use.

Assigned to the observatories -- technically as the pope’s personal astronomers -- are men who not only hold advanced astronomy and mathematics degrees but who are Jesuit priests. Their scientific findings are formally presented to church officials in Rome once a year.

“Our work is to be good scientists as well as good Catholics,” said Father Christopher Corbally, vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, who was giving a Catholic church group a tour of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.

The Vatican, which still fights its image as the institution that put Galileo on trial during the Inquisition for endorsing the idea that Earth was not the center of the universe, has said the observatory’s mission is to serve as a bridge between religion and science.

“Many see the disciplines of science and theology as mutually exclusive,” said Father Bill Stoeger, one of the Vatican astronomers.

In fact, the claims of the pope’s astronomers could make Christians who advocate a literal interpretation of the Bible squirm. One Vatican astronomer announced several years ago that the star of Bethlehem probably never existed. And virtually all of the pope’s astronomers have come to the same conclusion: God could not have created the universe in just six days about 10,000 years ago, as some literal interpreters of the Bible believe.

“People often ask me: ‘Do you believe in the Big Bang or in creation by God?’ ” Stoeger said. “And my answer is, ‘Yes.’ ”

Stoeger’s position is illustrative of the complex relationship between faith and science. Though Catholics are not typically fundamentalists in their reading of the Bible, the increasingly hot-button issue of evolution has recently touched off the kind of debate inside the Vatican that has been going on inside Protestant denominations for years.

If there is an intersection of faith and science for the Catholic Church, it is at the peak of Mt. Graham.

Corbally, the priest-astronomer leading the recent tour, explained how the complicated telescope works, why the church cares about his work and how science can deepen religious faith and understanding. He even made a few pope jokes. Pointing to a balcony that allows astronomers access to the outside of the telescope, he said, “Hey, when you’re in a business where the pope might drop by, you’ve got to have a balcony.”

The people taking the tour -- members of a local church group for which Corbally acts as spiritual leader -- listened transfixed as he explained the history of the Vatican Observatory. He said that in the late 1500s, the church ordered Jesuit scientists to reform the Julian calendar, which was too long and threw off the dates of religious holidays. With new astronomical data, the Gregorian calendar, still in use, was produced.

“That’s why the church chose this science, not something like medicine, originally,” Corbally said. “But the commitment to it over the years has endured because of a desire to create a bridge between good science and good religion.”

The Vatican’s initial observatories were in Rome and then in the Italian countryside, but both were rendered obsolete when the lights of Italy’s largest city made the night sky too bright to observe many stars.

In 1993, the Vatican Observatory, in collaboration with the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, completed the telescope on Mt. Graham. (The arrangement gives the Vatican 75% ownership and responsibility for the telescope, and the university 25%.)

Corbally, who has a doctorate in astronomy, said the more he unravels the complexities of the universe, the more he sees the brilliance of its creator.

“Our knowledge only increases our understanding of God,” said Corbally’s colleague, Stoeger, who has made it one of his missions to explain how the spiritually minded also can be scientifically minded. He said many Catholic theologians view the creation account found in Genesis as a story that reveals not a literal historical fact but the essential truth that God created everything, including all the mechanisms that allow for evolution.

Surveys indicate Americans might not be predisposed to consolidate the scientific view of evolution with their own church-influenced views. According to a November 2004 Gallup Poll, almost half of the U.S. population believes that human beings did not evolve but were created by God, as stated in the Bible, essentially in their current form about 10,000 years ago. That dovetails with a 2005 Pew Research poll indicating that 42% of Americans believe “life on Earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.”

Such viewpoints are causing the evolution debate to play out not just inside churches but in schools, where creationism advocates are demanding that alternative beliefs of origin be taught.

“The truth is that a lot of our findings don’t translate that well to people on the street,” Stoeger said.

But religious and scientific scholars such as Stoeger say the Catholic Church has long included believers who remain deeply religious while breaking new scientific ground.

Angelo Secchi, a Jesuit priest and astronomer, was a pioneer in spectroscopy in the 19th century. Georges Lemaitre, another priest, proposed the Big Bang theory in 1933.

“I think we bridge the gap between science and religion simply by doing good science while at the same time being deeply devoted to the church and to Christ,” Stoeger said. “Through that we can bear witness to the fact that there is no contradiction between the two, that good theology and good science actually reinforce and enrich each other.”

At the Mt. Graham observatory, as Corbally discussed the origins of the universe, one of his parishioners was asked whether it troubled her that her spiritual advisor did not believe that God created the universe in six days and then rested on the seventh, as told in poetic detail in the Bible.

“I have to believe that none of it is contradictory; it’s just that we aren’t entirely capable of understanding it,” Carol Habra said. “After all, who’s to say that one day to God isn’t 2 billion years to us? I’m going to ask him about that when I get there.”

As the church group members wrapped up their tour, they filed past the small plaque dedicating the powerful telescope. Its words inadvertently framed the current argument over whether life’s biggest questions are best pursued through science or through the divine:

“May whoever searches here day and night the far reaches of space do it joyfully with the help of God.”

High on Mt. Graham, with a stunning vista of the Arizona desert spread out below, the evolution debate seemed worlds away. In fact, it all seemed quite simple: The parishioners touring the observatory looked to their priest for answers and insight. In turn, he looked toward the heavens.